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The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

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Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#91
post #30

Calm seems interesting, though not something I'd want to do with my phone (even though I get the appeal of it being everywhere). Wouldn't mind an AndroidTV app so I can do it at home, sitting on my carpeted floor, in the relative darkness, in front of a TV.. rather than squinting at a phone

Surely you're closing your eyes and listening to the voice as you meditate. At which point, it'd be nice to do it wherever you please.

Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#92
post #80

I always wondered how he got that site running in the first place. I had my own similar "dumb idea" that I created: http://www.ipaidthemost.com , but I have no idea how to get it out in front of people, even though folks tend to react well enough when I show it to them.

Neat site. I may or may not have attempted an XSS attack (which did work on the Confirm page, but not the homepage).

I saw that and smiled. Panicked for a second, since this is old code in a dead framework, but thankfully the framework creators were smarter enough to cover for me. =3

Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing just how easy it is to write a quick script that downloads all the content and stores it on your hard drive. Subscribe for a month, write the script in an hour or so, unsubscribe, and you're done. I did this for one of these services and the most annoying thing was correcting the inconsistent names they gave their audio files. You can do this with anything - works great with programming screencasts, fo…

This sounds like stealing

Yeah, stealing. I downloaded HackerNews once and no one else could see it until they made a new one. /s

Potentially copyright infringement, YMMV. If you only consumed the articles once then a time-shifting Fair Use or Fair Dealing (or similar) case might be made.

Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#94

But Tew was the first to do it, which left a lot of people wondering why they didn’t think of it first. Lots of people thought of it, but discounted it because it was a dumb idea, missing one crucially important ingredient: page-views. Anybody can put up a web site, it's getting people to look at it that's hard. And once people are looking at it, it's easy to sell ad space. What no one could have known, including Tew…

I remember this at the time -- Tew invested the initial earnings he made ( So whilst he was lucky, he did kind of make his own luck by putting the money into it -- he could have just taken that money and sat on it.

I seem to recall reading that Tew spent up to 20% of his targeted million dollars on PR[1]. Which would suggest that he had a very good understanding of page views being the important ingredient, a good story for traditional media being important (more so at the time) to get there, and more faith in what he was doing than anyone else that had the idea of creating a pure web page billboard.

[1]IIRC it was discussed in Paul Carr's Bringing Nothing to the Party, which isn't exactly complimentary about Tew

Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#95
post #9

I have been using Headspace and Calm.com. While the services are valuable, I have hard time justifying buying a subscription with a monthly cost for something that is basically some guided meditation mp3. Compare buying a meditation book with a few guided meditation track for 20$, or subscribing to an app with a recurring cost of 70$/year, I don't really see the added value. Can someone shed light on what I am missin…

Chanting the word HU 5-minutes every day will probably do more for you than those services. And it doesn't cost a penny to learn how to chant it.

Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#96
post #69
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sell $1 bills for $0.90. That worked really well for Uber. It can work for you too! Huh? What's the story there?

Predatory Pricing. Something Uber did, which is illegal, but they will likely never get fined for it.

A taxi driver has to rent a medallion and a car (because they can't just use the one they already own) and needs to charge extra for trips across city limits (because they're barred from picking up anyone in another city). It's not predatory pricing when your lower prices are due to lower costs.

Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#97
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least there's no worry about the ever-increasing number (and increasing time-investment) of missed episodes to catch up on. I say this as the guy who wakes up in the morning with 500-800 overnight missed tweets, and then patiently reads through them.

That sounds awful.

It's a time-consuming but relatively harmless foible.

I guess it's partly FOMO, partly habit, and partly the slightly positive aspect of following a routine. There are the odd days when I just skip them all, but it does leave me slightly irked.

All in all, it's not the worst thing in the world, although I wouldn't be upset to grow out of the habit.

Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#98
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sponsored content. http://www.hulu.com/watch/873050 It is South Park (so you get all the crude/offensive humor that comes with it), but this episode is a pretty good microcosm of this sort of thing.

It's the BBC. Sponsored content isn't allowed.

They allow sponsored content they're just really restrictive about it.

For example I couldn't wear my work shirt (with logo) during a 2 minute piece on a kids TV program. However, watch whatever is on on a Saturday night, guest appearance from some "star" and the host's question will be "so, you've got a [media product] coming out", with a promo image of the book/movie/CD/whatever. Or if it's a movie then they'll often show a short clip (aka advert).

If you watch a cooking show then it seems it's fine to promo a restaurant as long as it's high-end - here's such-and-such chef, fresh from his Michelin starred restaurant at Poshtown. It's quid pro quo but waiving [part of] an appearance fee in order to get publicity surely counts.

It's curious, some kids shows are all black-tape over the carton being used to make a craft project but then they have an "inside the factory" series which is a massive promotional piece - though probably not paid - for the companies with branding clearly shown. You might argue not "sponsored" but "we'll let you do this filming if you show our factories in a good light and keep our name and logo in the show" seems sponsored to me.

Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#99
post #81
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the SF Bay Area it's still way cheaper to take Uber than a Taxi.

In the one urban area that has the worst taxi service in the US, Uber is winning. Great!

Cheaper in Seattle too.

They are still losing billions a year.

Re: The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

#100

But Tew was the first to do it, which left a lot of people wondering why they didn’t think of it first. Lots of people thought of it, but discounted it because it was a dumb idea, missing one crucially important ingredient: page-views. Anybody can put up a web site, it's getting people to look at it that's hard. And once people are looking at it, it's easy to sell ad space. What no one could have known, including Tew…

Funny story about that.

I worked on an internship back in 2004, and one morning my manager walked in and asked a coworker and me something like, "Do you think people would buy pixels on a website?" We asked what he meant, and he explained this exact idea.

Of course we told him it was dumb and nobody would buy pixels and it would be pointless, and how would anybody find it, etc., and he decided not to do anything with it.

Then, about a year later, this site came around, made the news, and sold out in no time.

Like you said, there's a lot more to it then just putting the site online, but I've always felt a little bad for dismissing it so quickly.

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